Heathentown Making Of

Heathentown Making Of reel from Previsualization Society on Vimeo.

Special thanks to Kim Menaster for putting this together for me.

The Heathentown pitch reel was a great opportunity to work with Gabe Hardman, a very talented guy and comic author, who has drawn the boards for many of PLF's previs projects, including Spiderman III, Superman Returns, Logan's Run, and some others.

One challenge facing the previs artist is how to inject character, emotion and subtle performance nuances into previs, without undertaking and elaborate and time consuming facial rigging and performance process, which everyone knows is extremely hard to do well. Storyboards are great for this, but don't always provide the technical information which a previs process seeks to deliver. Board-o-matics in After Effects are one alternative - cutting up the boards and sliding the parts around to tell the story better and time things out. This can work pretty well, but isn't that easy to do well, and still lacks the 3D underpinnings which allow valid technical planning to be don via previs.

I had long wanted an opportunity to develop the drawing based methodology for previs, as a way to put emotion and character into a simple piece, and luckily for me Gabe came along with a cool idea, and the needed willingness to do the needed drawings. The approach I settled on was to start with old school 3D previs, in a simple 3D environment, with simply rigged 3D characters and correctly set up cameras. Gabe was involved in composing the shots, setting up the layouts, selecting lenses etc. We cut these 3D shots together, made adjustments, and had a good idea of what each shot was and exactly what drawings were needed. Gabe then mad these drawings and I took them into XSI, hid the 3D characters, and put the drawings in their place/ Sometimes I had to give him wireframe images for him to draw on top of, and camera-projected these onto the environment. I was able to do some small camera moves on these 3D assemblies of drawings, and preserve the 3 dimensionality of the cameras, lenses, and camera shake, motion blur, etc, Depth of field was faked in After effects.
For shots which had characters in multiple expressions, Gabe did multiple drawings, and I used the FX Tree in XSI to dissolve between them, resulting in mostly single pass renders for shots.

The conquistador posed a challenge to this technique, as the amount of movement was too much to dissolve between. For these shots, I gave Gabe a series of still images of the 3D conquistador in various poses, and gabe drew on top of these. I camera projected these images onto my 3D conquistador, and again got single pass renders of this character's mesh moving the drawing around in a 3 dimensional way.

I think this approach ("Draw-vis") could be used effectively in future projects which are simple in scope and depend on strong characters and emotions, as long as there is an artist on hand willing to draw the specific drawings needed.

You can see how this all worked by studying the "Making Of" reel, which has the shots rendered from Overview cameras showing the 3D scene and camera which created each shot.

Heathentown Pitch Reel

Heathentown Pitch Reel from Previsualization Society on Vimeo.

Note from Director Gabe Hardman:
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Working on features as a storyboard artist and creatively supervising previs sequences I've seen first hand how useful a tool they can be it can be creating excitement for a project. On Spider-Man 3, Duane Floch, Chris Batty and I collaborated on a hybrid 2D/3D sequence based on my drawings that was particularly effective. The sequence heavily featured the emotional faces of the characters so the director, Sam Raimi encouraged us to integrate the drawings into the animation. When putting together a feature pitch for Heathentown, based on the graphic novel by Coninna Sara Bechko and myself, having a dynamic previs sequence to show was a high priority. The 2D/3D process sprung to mind. It was something always wanted to take further. I was lucky enough to get the chance to work with Colin Green to create a unique and visually striking sequence.
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Behind the Scenes "Making Of" reel coming shortly.

Welcome to the Previs Society!

It is very exciting that we are up and running - applications for membership are flowing in, and people across the industry seem to know about us already, and about our mission.  A lot of energy has gone into making all of this progress, and I am very appreciative of the efforts of many, listed below.

Collaboration is a key part of our definition for previsualization, and a key concept which our entire industry is getting behind at this important moment in the evolution of film making. I am proud that this has been a part of our message and our foundational principle behind our new society. We all need to make sure that we encourage as broad a community as can be made around previs, so that its full potential can be reached, and can be understood as the mature industry that it is becoming.

The Previsualization Society was originally conceived as a Trade Organization, to promote the business of previs, and this remains our focus.  We will collaborate with many other groups to ensure that previsualization flourishes in as many diverse environments as we can, including outside the film industry. We will also work directly with business leaders in our industry to create the business conditions which will help our grass roots industry to thrive and mature. Major studios, who are our main clients, could get more mileage out of the work we do, and we want to partner with them to foster this. We also need to make the case that smaller independent productions know that previs is for them too. Beyond the film industry, we can show that the values and culture which surround the previs process can be equally powerful  in other industries and creative endeavors.

There is a lot to do to maximize the ability of our organization to achieve its goals. The main help we need to get these goals accomplished is contributions of expertise and enthusiasm from as broad a cross section of the community which surrounds previs that we can. When you see a forum topic about which you have an opinion, post it. And tell people about the Society, and its unique mission.

This said, my immediate priority as President is to build the strongest organizational structures for the Society. We are starting from a blank slate, and have a lot of basic systems to set up, so that people who are just hearing about us can  understand how to get involved, how their voice will be heard, and how they can become a future President. All of these constitutional issues are the main thing I need to make sure are not left as a project for the second Society President, and that people outside of our group of founders have a clear path between them and greater leadership roles in the Society.

Special thanks need to go to David Morin, who hosted our first meeting to discuss founding this organization, and has been a nearly daily supporter and mentor for our efforts all along. We would not have made it to where we are without his help. Brian Pohl has put an enormous amount of volunteer energy into the website, which is a critical part of our approach to completing our mission. Kara Misenheimer did an excellent job of helping us refine our messaging documents and manage our press launch efforts (which she handled very expertly). Dan Gregoire has done a great job in crafting our approach to the sponsorships that our Society will need to grow.And all the other founders - Chris, David, and Ron, have all put in significant time and energy to getting this organization up an running. I want to acknowledge how much dedication and thoughtfulness has gone into our formation, crafting our mission, and getting the sails of the Society filled.